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Passage Illustrated

"And you suppose I didn't see how it was managed that you and that
Miss Prettyman were always partners at whist?​ How was it managed? Why, plain
enough. Of course you packed the cards, and could cut what you liked. You'd settled that
between you. Yes; and when she took a trick, instead of leading off a trump​ — she
play whist, indeed!​— what did you say to her, when she found it was wrong? Oh​
— it was impossible that her heart should mistake! And this, Mr. Caudle,
before people​— with your own wife in the room!

And Miss Prettyman​— I won't hold my tongue. I will talk of
Miss Prettyman: who's she, indeed, that I shouldn't talk of her? I suppose she thinks she
sings? What do you say?​ She sings like a mermaid? [Lecture XXI. "Mr. Caudle
Has Not Acted 'Like a Husband' at the Wedding Dinner," p. 108 ]

Commentary

Keene introduces the much-reviled, attractive Miss Prettyman playing whist
with Job Caudle after the fourteenth anniversary dinner that Margaret Caudle has insisted
they throw for a few friends. Presumably Mrs, Caudle's other bête noir, Richard
Prettyman (the girl's father and Job's drinking companion), has accompanied his daughter
to the celebratory dinner and subsequent card-playing. This mixed-gender card-game seems
to have had the stamp of middle-class respectability, if one may judge by this Keene
illustration and Marcus Stone's A
Rubber at Miss Havisham's in the Illustrated Library Edition of Great Expectations (1864).

Bibliography

Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, as
Suffered by the late Job Caudle.​Edited from the Original MSS. by Douglas Jerrold.
With a frontispiece by Leech, and as motto on the title-page, "Then, Pistol, lay thy head
in Fury's lap. — Shakespeare."​ London: Punch​ Office;
Bradbury​ and Evans,​ 1846.